It’s not unusual that a reunion album is marketed as a “return to the glory days.” But in the case of the new Meat Puppets CD Sewn Together, it’s high praise that also begs an important question. If you’re a grizzled cult band that’s slogged through a cartoonishly tumultuous 30-year career, what exactly qualifies as your “glory days?”
“The glory days? Jeez, I don’t know,” answers Curt Kirkwood, who
formed the Puppets with his brother Cris in a Phoenix suburb back in
1980. “That would probably be when we were still living with our
parents and playing in the living room — before anyone ever
really addressed exactly what we were. But, you know, I’m not the judge
of that kind of thing. I’m convinced that I’m only as good as my last
gig, and my glory days are the ones that I’m in now.”
Kirkwood doesn’t feel like Sewn Together particularly
resembles the sound of his band’s mid-’80s critical peak or its
mid-’90s commercial breakthrough. To his credit, he has never been one
to linger too much in the past, even if a band reunion would tend to
indicate the contrary. In truth, getting back with the Meat Puppets was
more about continuing a book that had never really been closed in the
first place.
“I did a lot of solo projects, and it was good,” says Kirkwood. “But
Meat Puppets is Meat Puppets. I never intended for it to be broken up.
I never said it was. It’s frustrating now for it to seem like we’ve
‘reformed.’ It’s mental to me. I’m still in denial about it.”
Indeed, the Puppets’ long hiatus was never announced so much as
forced, thanks to the group’s infamous drug problems and the eventual
imprisonment of Cris Kirkwood. When the brothers finally reunited for
2007’s Rise to Your Knees (their first record together in 12
years), the album suffered from understandable rustiness and the lack
of original drummer Derrick Bostrom, who declined the Kirkwoods’ offer
to return. Addressing these issues with consistent touring and the
hiring of talented new drummer Ted Marcus, the Meat Puppets truly do
sound back at full force on Sewn Together — a tightly
devised but quickly recorded album that celebrates the band in its raw
state.
“I like the idea of actually getting the real version of what we
are,” says Kirkwood. “I don’t like the enhancements of the digital age.
I knew I wanted to set up the band and play the songs live, because I
like the way we sound, just like that. And that’s what you get here.
There are some guitar overdubs and some vocal multi-tracking, but
overall, it’s pretty real.”
Along with guest musicians William Joseph (piano) and Kevin Bowe
(guitar, dulcimer, percussion), Sewn Together benefits from the
presence of Kirkwood’s son Elmo — a guitarist and budding
producer in his own right.
“Elmo’s just got a different perspective,” says Kirkwood. “He’s more
of a hardass in a way. He’s my son, so nobody can get too pissed off at
him — everybody likes him. But he’s also the kind of person who
will tell you that you totally suck, and it doesn’t matter what you
think of what you’ve done. If he’s not into it, he’s going to say
something. He doesn’t hold any sway, of course, but it’s still really
fun to have somebody like that in there for that outside pair of
ears.”
Perhaps as a testament to Elmo’s insights, Sewn Together doesn’t sound like an album made by aging rockers past their prime.
It’s an energized, eclectic effort that — while not quite as
charming as the 25-year-old classic Meat Puppets II —
wouldn’t sound out of place as a follow-up to that record (particularly
tracks like “I’m Not You” and “The Monkey and the Snake”).
All things told, Sewn Together is a record Puppets fans can
be proud of, even if the road that led to it was a lot bumpier that it
could have been.
“There’s no model for this stuff,” says Kirkwood. “It’s not like we
decided one day, ‘Oh, let’s be the totally fucking insane Meat
Puppets!’ It just happened. I mean, we could have done better in some
ways, but I don’t know. There are only so many options I had. I’m from
Phoenix, I’m not that talented and I’m pretty lazy. So I had to let a
lot ride on this life. And I don’t really think I’d do anything
differently.”
This article appears in Jun 3-9, 2009.